The demand for ubiquitous personal communications is driving the development of new networking techniques that accommodate mobile voice and data users who move throughout buildings, cities or countries. The cellular system is responsible for providing coverage throughout a particular territory, called a coverage region or market. The interconnection of many such systems defines a wireless network capable of providing service to mobile users throughout a country or continent.
To provide wireless communications within a particular geographic region, an integrated network of base stations should be deployed to provide sufficient radio coverage to all mobile users. The base stations, in turn, should be also connected to a central hub called the mobile switching center (MSC). The MSC provides connectivity between all of the wireless subscribers in a system.
As compared with the local, fixed telephone network, where all end-users are static, a wireless communications system is extremely complex. The wireless network requires an air interface between base stations and subscribers to provide communications under a wide range of propagation conditions and for any possible user location. To assure adequate area coverage, the deployment of many, sometimes hundreds, of base stations throughout a market is necessary, and each of these base stations should be connected to the MSC. Furthermore, the MSC should eventually provide connection for each of the mobile users to a base station. This requires simultaneous connections to the local exchange carrier (LEC), to one or more interexchange carriers (IXCs), and to other MSCs via a separate cellular signaling network.
For efficient utilization of the radio spectrum, each service provider may employ a variety of channel assignment strategies that can be classified as either fixed or dynamic. In a dynamic channel assignment strategy, the channels are not allocated to a cell on a permanent basis. Instead, the allocation of a channel may follow an algorithm that takes into account the likelihood of future blocking within the cell, the frequency of use of the candidate channel, the reuse distance of the channel, and other cost functions.
In many publicly available wireless communication today, such as cellular, Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD), Global System for Mobile users (GSM), Personal Communication Service (PCS), wireless Internet, etc, users are able to access the desired information though networks operated by or coordinated through Service Providers. Service Providers often build, operate, and maintain these networks, but this is not always the case. Service Providers may provide the wireless access for customers, purchase or lease the network access from others, or sub-contract out the network access to others.
There are usually several Service Providers to choose from for a particular wireless communication type. A typical user can select one provider and obtain most of his wireless service needs through that provider. This user selected Service Provider is referred to as the preferred Service provider for the customer.
In those instances where the preferred Service provider is either unavailable or unreachable at the time of access, the customer can gain access to the network to get the desired information, but through a non-preferred Service Provider. When access to the information is obtained through a non-preferred Service provider, the extra charges (for instance, roaming charges) are often incurred. The extra charges are charged above and beyond the normal costs that the customer expects when accessing through a preferred Service Provider. The extra-charges are assessed by the non-preferred Service Provider for usage of their networks and are due to the fact that the user did not select the non-preferred Service Provider as his preferred Service provider.
When a customer has gained access to the information through a non-preferred Service Provider, there are many disadvantages to both the customer and to the preferred Service Provider for this particular customer.
1. Possible roaming charges. These charges are imposed by the non-preferred Service Provider for usage of their networks. The roaming charges can be quite excessive. PA1 2. Preferred Service Provider network is not fully used by its own customers, leading to its less efficient overall usage. PA1 3. There is a quality of service issue when a customer is not using his preferred Service Provider. PA1 4. There is a consistency of service issue when a customer is not using his preferred Service Provider. PA1 1. Both preferred and non-preferred Service Provider are available, but the non-preferred Service Provider has a higher signal strength than the preferred Service Provider at the time of connection. PA1 2. The last channel connected was a non-preferred Service Provider channel and the wireless communication device has a history list which has a last-in-highest-priority scheme giving the last connected channel the highest priority. If both the preferred and the non-preferred Service Providers are available, the non-preferred Service Provider will be selected because it has a highest priority.
A customer may be forced to access the information through a non-preferred Service Provider even when a preferred Service Provider is available.